Stacking the Shelves: The More TPOBAB Edition

 "Stacking the Shelves" is a weekly haul meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews and Reading Reality. It allows book buyers to share their accumulation of books with the online book-loving community.

It's almost mid-October, and it's finally getting cooler here. Thank goodness. While I'm not looking forward to the cold months, I needed it to stop being 80 degrees in autumn. It was just rude. Now that the weather is better, I've been taking more walks outside lately, and loving it. I hope the 60-70-degree weather continues for a few weeks at least before I have to hibernate indoors for winter.

Now, it's time to talk about books. I have more copies of The Primal of Blood and Bone to share, of course. This one is my Doylestown preorder that I got signed by Jennifer L. Armentrout. It came with a large sticker, character art cards, and a small bag. It's also personalized. I really just wanted the swag. It's the only reason I ordered this copy. It's a good thing I did though, because my other hardcover I ordered from Barnes & Noble came damaged, so I have a good replacement for that one. 

 

 

 

Up next, I have the replacement B&N edition of TPOBAB. That first copy I received also came very damaged, so B&N sent a replacement. They didn't do that for the regular edition. It wasn't damaged enough for their standards. My B&N preorders of the new edition of Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick and Mate by Ali Hazelwood also arrived. And, I got my September Adult book, Alchemised by Senlinyu. I'm on the fence about reading this one. I want to see what all the hype is about, but the actual content sounds blugh to me. I'll keep it for a while and then decide. And finally, my Waterstones preorder of What Fury Brings by Tricia Levenseller came this week. It was a pretty good week for preorders, honestly.

 

 

 

And here, I have my preorder incentive swag from Macmillan. It's the two characters in art print form and a signed bookplate for What Fury Brings. I love the artwork for this book, so I'm glad they gave it to us in print form. I didn't want to display the naked hardcover, which also has this character art on it, on my shelves without the dust jacket. That's just not my style, so now I can display these prints instead. Yay!

 

Well, that's all for me. What books have you bought/received lately?

September Wrap-Up & October TBR

Well, September was probably the worst month ever in terms of the the craziness happening in this country. But, in my everyday life news, it was nice. I took my trip to D.C., saw JLA again, and read my most anticipated release of the year. There's honestly not much else to look forward to in the next few months other than the holidays, now that that's all over. I need to find some cool things to do, especially before it gets cold.

In this wrap-up, I’ll list the books I read, the books I reviewed, the books I bought/received, and my TBR for next month. Now, let’s get this bookish party started!

Books Read in September

Curse of Shadows and Thorns: 3.5 stars

Silver Elite: 4 stars

Playing Dirty: 3 stars

Saving the Rain: 3 stars

Forging Silver Into Stars: 4 stars

The Hemlock Queen: 4 stars

The Primal of Blood and Bone: 4 stars (review to come)

Five Broken Blades: 4 stars 

I read eight books in September, which is great considering one of them was super long and I also took a trip during the month. I also read some solid reads, so that's good. I don't think I normally give out this many four stars. But anyway, I read four physical books in September and four ebooks, with one of those ebooks also technically counting as a physical copy since I own the physical copies too. The physical books include Curse of Shadows and Thorns by L.J. Andrews, Silver Elite by Dani Francis, The Hemlock Queen by Hannah Whitten, and Five Broken Blades by Mai Corland. The ebooks include Playing Dirty by C.E. Ricci, Saving the Rain by Elliott Rose, Forging Silver Into Stars by Brigid Kemmerer, and The Primal of Blood and Bone by Jennifer L. Armentrout (the book I have both physical and ebook copies of.).

Books Bought/Received in September

September was expensive, but I knew it would be going in. Now, the plan is to tone it down for the next few months. I've already canceled/skipped a couple of sub boxes, so that should be fine. However, there are some special edition sales this month that I'm probably going to purchase. None of them are going to be complete sets, so that's good. Overall for September, though, I bought 36 books and received seven.

The seven books I received consisted mostly of FairyLoot books that I'd ordered in previous months: The Ashfire King by Chelsea Abdullah, Between These Broken Hearts by Lexi Ryan, The Bone Raiders by Jackson Ford, A Curse Carved in Bone by Danielle L. Jensen, and Katabasis by R.F. Kuang. The remaining two included a preroder from August that didn't get to me in that month, which was the UK hardcover of Direbound by Sable Sorensen, and I got a copy of Scythe by Neal Schusterman from my local bookstore using trade credit.

  

Now, for what I bought. I only received 19 of the 36 books I purchased. Those included Wild Reverence by Rebecca Ross (Waterstones); Never Ever After by Sue Lynn Tan and Metal Slinger by Rachel Schneider  (FairyLoot); The Second Death of Locke by V.A. Bovalino (September Illumicrate); Visions of Flesh and Blood French edition by JLA (FNAC); What Fury Brings by Tricia Levenseller, Sorrow and Starlight by Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti, and House of Bane and Blood by Alexis L. Menard (B&N preorders). I also had six TPOBAB preorders arrive (or in one case, I picked it up for a signing). Those included two B&N editions, two Target editions, one regular hardback I preordered from B&N, and one Walmart edition. I also made an Amazon order for a few books I needed/wanted to replace. Those included Remembrance by Meg Cabot, The Mediator: Reunion, the Mediator bindup of books 1-2, and Warrior Fae by Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti (not pictured). Oh, and last, but not least, I bought the Kindle edition of TPOBAB.

 As for the remaining 17 books, some of them should be on their way soon and others won't ship out for a while yet. Those all include the UK editions of the Mediator series; Ink Pages and Autumn Midnights editions of the Flesh & Fire series; the Indigo edition of TPOBAB; the Waterstones edition of What Fury Brings; the September Adult FairyLoot book; the FairyLoot editions of What Fury Brings, Silver Elite, and The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy; and some paperback preorders of Bittern Burn and Bitten.

Currently Obsessed With

I honestly have no idea what to put here. I didn't really watch much of anything in September. Or at least, if I did, I don't remember it at all. So, I guess I'll just say Shrek 2, as I started watching that towards the end of the month. For the most part, I've been scrolling on my phone or watching BookTube videos. I was watching Home Improvement on Netflix for a bit, but I stopped that since I was on the last season.

October TBR

For a third month in a row, I'm not changing my TBR. Mostly because I'm lazy, but also because a lot of the books I need to read are still pictured, like Salt in the Wound by Sierra Simone, The Sun and the Void by Gabriela Romero Lacruz, The Two Lies of Faven Sythe by Megan E. O'Keefe, Rain of Shadows and Endings by Melissa K. Roehrich, Rebel Witch by Kristen Ciccarelli, and Lightlark by Alex Aster. I need to read We Who Will Die by Stacia Stark, Our Rogue Fates by Sarah Marsh, and To Cage a Wild Bird by Brooke Fast as well. Those three are all NetGalley eARCs.

***

Okay, well, that's the month of September, plus some October sneak peeks, all wrapped up into one post. Do you have a wrap-up post for last month? If so, share in the comments!

Stacking the Shelves: The Primal of Blood and Bone Edition

 "Stacking the Shelves" is a weekly haul meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews and Reading Reality. It allows book buyers to share their accumulation of books with the online book-loving community.

I've been in recovery mode from my trip, so there's not much to say about life. I came back from D.C. last Friday, and I feel like my butt was kicked. I haven't gone to the gym in like two weeks, and I'm all meh. But, I think I'll be back to normal by this weekend. In the meantime, let's talk about books.

Obviously, it was The Primal of Blood and Bone release week last week, so my crazy amount of preorders came in. I preordered two Target editions because I thought if one came damaged, it would be good to have the extra, since I don't have a Target near me. Both came in fine condition, though. My Walmart edition kind of came with a small dent on the dust jacket, so I went to the store to trade for a new one. That was a whole process. Like all of the editions there weren't in the best condition. I had to take a dust jacket off of one book and put it on another to get the best sprayed edges. Ugh. I also went to the Fairfax, VA, Barnes & Noble signing event, so one of the B&N editions is from there. The other two copies are preorders from B&N that include one regular hardcover and one B&N edition. The B&N edition came beat up to holy heck, so a replacement is being sent. I get to keep the damaged one, so I'll use it for any extra dust jacket sets that come out. The regular hardback also came kind of damaged, but I only got a 20% refund for it, since the dust jacket was just crunched in the corner. I have another regular edition coming soon from one of the bookstores JLA did a signing for, so I'll include that. It may even be coming before this haul goes live. So, if you see it in this post, then you'll know it did. 

 

 

 

 

Up next, I have some TPOBAB goodies. (Ignore the B&N copy, I included that in the above pic too.) I received the spoiler card for TPOBAB JLA Shop box. Mine was missing in my box that I got a couple of weeks ago, so the JLA Shop was nice enough to send me one of their extras. My preorder incentive bookmark and temporary tattoo also arrived from the publisher, and you can see the swag that came with the B&N Fairfax event. There were character cards, a bookmark, and a small tote bag.

 

 

 

And here, I have the French edition of Visions of Flesh and Blood by JLA. I've been kind of reluctant to buy the French hardcover editions of this series, just because they typically aren't that different from the regular hardcovers. They just have colored endpapers, for the most part. But, the publisher went all out for Visions. It has sprayed edges, a ribbon bookmark, and a leathery/diary-type feel to the naked hardback. So, I got it. We'll see if I keep collecting the rest, though. I'm running out of room on my shelves.

 

And here we have some things that just arrived via Barnes & Noble. I preordered Bitter Burn by Sierra Simone as soon as it was announced. So I'll probably end up picking this one up fairly soon. I also preordered Bitten by Jordan Stephanie Gray. I love the color and design for the cover. My copy came with a small ouchie on the front, though. It's not anything I could get a refund for. It's just an annoying dent dot. I don't even know how it happened. I don't think it'll be super noticeable when it's on my shelf, at least. (Note: These two books arrived in October, along with the Mediator ones mentioned below, so they won't be listed as books bought in September in my upcoming September wrap-up post, in case there's any confusion.) 

 

 

 

And, miraculously, I have books that aren't JLA-related. My September Illumicrate book, The Second Death of Locke by V.L. Bovalino, was delivered right before my trip, and my B&N preorder of What Fury Brings by Tricia Levenseller arrived while I was gone. My sister picked it up for me so the packages didn't sit on my porch for two days. She had to do the same for all the TPOBAB editions that arrived while I was away. Oops. And my FairyLoot September YA book, Never Ever After by Sue Lynn Tan and my preorder of A Curse Carved in Bone by Danielle L. Jensen were also delivered to my parents' house, so I took those home after my trip.

 

 

 

Next, I have something that I kept forgetting I even ordered. I bought them on somewhat of a whim. Kind of. I'd been looking at the UK Mediator books for a long time, as I have been trying to purchase newer printings of the US mass market copies with eh luck. I'm still missing two. (To be fair, I do already have a set in their original printing, but they're very old, so I'd like newer versions.) Last month, I got tired of not having these, so I just decided, "Screw it. I'm buying them." Despite knowing how much money I was going to be spending on all the books and bookish things going on in September. But, I do really like these. They're very pretty.

 

And finally, for ebooks, I have Four Ruined Realms by Mai Corland. I downloaded it off of Kindle Unlimited after finishing the first book, Five Broken Blades. I enjoyed book one, but I'm not sure if I want to purchase the remaining two books. So, since they're on KU, I'm going to read them first, then decide. If I want to buy them later, I can do it when B&N has one of their online hardcover sales. 

 

Well, that's all for me. What books have you bought/received lately?